Songs of the Humpback Whale Read online

I unbutton Hadley�s flannel shirt and hold it soft against my skin. The hair on his chest is an unlikely shade of red. It circles in spirals that remind me of my father�s nautical maps. I rub my fingers across them, the opposite way, making the hair stand on end. He sings to me.

  Soon we are at that point we have been at before, naked except for each other. Hadley�s outstretched hands can cover the length of my spine. �Please,� I say to him. �I don�t want to be a kid anymore.�

  Hadley smiles. He pushes the hair back from my forehead. �You aren�t.� He kisses my neck and then he kisses my breasts and my stomach and my hips and then down there. �What are you doing,� I whisper, but I am really speaking to myself. I feel something starting, some energy, that draws blood from my fingertips and begins unexpected to open. I pull back on Hadley�s hair and scratch at his neck. I am afraid I will never get to see his face again. But then he slides up my body and in and we move like a sail, like a wind; he kisses me, full, on the lips, and to my great surprise I taste like the ocean.

  �Jesus, Hadley,� Sam says, and Hadley jumps up. He�s wearing his boxers. I pull his shirt over me and roll a blanket around my legs. I cannot see everyone clearly; there is some kind of fire behind my eyes.

  �Hadley.� My voice is not my own. �This is my father.�

  Unsure of what to do, Hadley holds out his hand. My father does not take it. I�m puzzled seeing my father in this environment. He is wearing suit pants and a polo shirt and brown loafers. I am amazed that he could climb up here with a sole like that.

  My head is throbbing so heavily I lie back down. The park ranger-the only person here who has been paying attention to me-kneels down and asks if I am all right. �To tell you the truth,� I say, �I don�t really know.� I try to sit up with his help, but there are shooting pains in my ears and in my eyes. Hadley kneels down beside me. He tells the ranger to get me away from everyone, where there�s air.

  �Get the hell away from her,� my father says. �Don�t touch her.�

  Sam, standing beside him, tells Hadley it might be best.

  �What do you know?� Hadley shouts at Sam.

  I am having a great deal of trouble concentrating on the scene at hand. When people speak, I can�t hear the actual words until several seconds later. The sun swims in between their faces, bleaching them like overexposed photos. I try very hard to focus on Sam�s eyes, the brightest color of anything in front of me. Beside Sam, my father seems small and two-dimensional, like a paper doll.

  �Rebecca,� my father�s voice comes to me through a tunnel. �Are you all right? Did he hurt you?�

  �He wouldn�t hurt her.� Sam leans in close to me with a face curved like a camera lens. �Can you stand up?�

  I shake my head. Hadley takes my shoulders in his hands, regardless of what my father has said, which I do not remember anyway. He places his head so close to mine I can read his mind. He is thinking: I love you. Don�t forget that. �Let me talk,� I whisper, but nobody seems to hear me.

  �Look, she came to me. She hitched. We were headed to your place today to work this all out.� His words are too loud.

  �Hadley,� Sam says slowly, �I think you�d better let Rebecca come home with us. And I think you�d better stay here for a while.�

  Let me talk, I say again, but I am ignored. It occurs to me I may not be speaking at all.

  Hadley stands up and walks away from the clearing. He has his hands on his hips. When he turns around the veins in his forehead are strained and blue, and he stares at Sam. �You know me. You�ve known me forever. I can�t believe,� here he looks at my father, �I cannot believe that you- you -would doubt me. You�re my friend, Sam. You�re like my brother. I didn�t tell her to come here-I wouldn�t do that. But I�m not just gonna turn my back and let you take her away. Jesus, Sam,� he takes a step backward. �I love her.�

  With all the energy I have I lunge towards Hadley, not quite standingand not quite crawling. He catches me in his arms and presses my face into his chest. He whispers into my hair things I cannot make out.

  �Let go of her, you bastard,� my father mutters. Sam lays a hand on his arm but he shakes it off and yells into the sky. �Let go of my daughter!�

  �Give her to us, Hadley,� Sam says softly.

  �Sir,� the ranger says, the first word I hear without the static of the trees.

  �No,� I whisper to Hadley.

  He kneels down and takes my face in his hands. �Don�t cry, now. You look like an onion when you cry, your nose gets all long . . .� I look up at him. �There you go. Now I said I�d come for you, didn�t I, and your father came a long way to see you. Go on home.� His voice cracks, and he swallows hard. I trace his Adam�s apple with my finger. �You need a doctor. Go back to Sam�s and get better, and I�ll come for you. We�ll work this all out like I said. You go with them.�

  �Give her to us,� Sam says again.

  I know as sure as I know myself that if I leave that mountain without Hadley I will never see him again. �I can�t,� I tell Hadley, and it�s true. Except for him, I don�t have anyone left who will love me. I wrap my arms around his waist and pull myself closer.

  �You have to go with them,� he says gently. �Don�t you want to make me happy? Don�t you see?�

  �No,� I say, pulling myself to Hadley.

  �Go, Rebecca,� Hadley says, a little louder. He loosens my grip on his waist and holds my hands.

  �I won�t.� Tears are running down my face and my nose is running and I don�t give a damn. I will not, I tell myself. I will not.

  Hadley looks at the sky and with great force pushes me away by my wrists. He pushes so hard that I land several feet away on the rocks and the dirt. He pushes so hard that, without me beside him, he loses his balance.

  I try to grab at him but I am too far away. I catch the air, and he falls over the edge of the cliff.

  He falls so slowly, twisting in a somersault like a rough-cut acrobat, and I hear the rush of the river I heard last night before there was the beating of his heart in my hand. Thick as breath, I hear his spine hit the rocks and the water below.

  After this, everything that has built up inside me spills out. It is nonverbal. It is a chord that comes when a knife cleaves your soul. And only now, with this sound surrounding, does everyone choose to listen.

  17 O LIVER

  My car runs out of gas in Carefree, Arizona, of all places, and I am forced to walk a sweltering half-mile to find a gas station. It is not the mom-and-pop operation I am expecting, but rather a respectable steel and chrome Texaco. Only one attendant is there.

  �Hey,� he says as I walk up. He doesn�t really look at me, so I have the opportunity to survey him first. He has long brown hair and terrible acne; I place him at seventeen. �You�re not from around here.�

  �Oh,� I say, more sarcastic than I have to be. �How can you tell?�

  The boy laughs through his nose and shrugs. He seems to actually be thinking up an answer to my rhetorical statement. �I know everyone in this town, I guess.�

  �That�s astute of you.� I smile.

  �Astute,� he repeats, trying the word on for size. As if he remembers his occupation, he jumps off the ten-gallon drum he has been resting on and asks if I�d like some help.

  �Some unleaded,� I tell him. �My car is down the road.�

  He focuses his attention on my gas can, a gift from the bank where Jane and I have a savings account. Marine Midland Bank, it is called, and its logo is a streamlined cartoon whale-we chose the institution for obvious emotional reasons.

  �Hey,� the boy says. �I seen one of these.�

  �A gas can? I�d imagine so.�

  �No, a whale can. You know, this picture thing here. There was one in here yesterday being filled up. Some lady who filled her tank and then found out we took credit cards and asked if we could fill up the spare can too.�

  Jane, I recall, has a can like it. The second year we were banking-with Midland, we chose another gas can. We already had a nice toaster.

  �What did this woman look like?� I can feel my neck getting f
lushed and the hair on the back of my neck standing. �Was there anyone with her?�

  �Shit, I don�t know. We get a million people in here a day.� He looks up at me, and to my complete embarrassment I recognize this as a look of pity. �They weren�t from this town though, I can tell you that.�

  I grab him by the shirt collar and hold him pinned to the diesel fuel tank. �Listen to me,� I say, enunciating clearly. �I am looking for my wife and that may be her. Now you think about it and try to remember what she looks like. You try to remember if she had a little girl with her. If you talked to her about where she was going.�

  �Okay, okay,� the boy says, pushing me away. He gives me a sideways look and makes a slow circle around the self-service island. �I think she had dark hair,� he says, looking at my face to see if he is getting the answer right. He smacks his hands on his thighs, then. �The girl was pretty. A real fox, you know? Blond and a tight little ass. She asked for the key to the bathroom,� he laughs, �and I told her I�d give her the key to my house too, if she met me there after work.�

  This is the best news I have heard in hours. Nothing is certain with such a vague description, but in a situation such as this some hint of evidence is better than nothing. �Where were they headed?� I ask, as calm as I can be given the circumstances.

  �Route Seventeen,� he says. �They asked how you get back to Route Seventeen. Maybe they�re headed to the Canyon.�

  Of course they were going to the Grand Canyon. Jane was with Rebecca, and Rebecca would want to see as much as possible, each tourist trap en route. An angle I hadn�t considered.

  �Thank you,� I say to the boy. �You have made my day.�

  The boy grins. He needs braces. �That�s a buck twenty-five,� he says. �Hell. It�s on the house.�

  I run from the gas station without thanking the boy. I do not notice the heat or the distance on the journey back. The Grand Canyon. I feed in the gas and turn the ignition, imagining this union of Jane, Rebecca and the majestic red walls that were cut by the Colorado River.

  18 S AM

  In my opinion, if you leave things to their natural course, they go bad. Apples that grow wild along the shores of brooks tend towards blight. I�m not saying that you can�t get a perfect apple without chemical help, but I�ll tell you it�s not easy.

  The reason I keep sheep at the orchard is so that I don�t have to spray so much. I don�t know; I never liked the idea of pesticides. Guthion, Thiodan, Dieldin, Elgetol- they don�t sound right, do they? I�m caught in the system, though-as a commercial grower I have to produce fruit that is competitive with other commercial orchards, or else the supermarkets won�t buy. So I try to use the less toxic ones that I�ve heard of: dodine instead of parathion to prevent apple scab and mildew; Guthion sprayed only once, so I risk bull�s-eye rot. I completely avoid 2,4-D-I can�t stand things without real word names--and that�s what I use my sheep for. They graze on the grass and weeds around the trees, like lawnmowers, so I don�t need chemicals. And although it kills me, I spray the trees that are cordoned off for the supermarkets with Ethrel and NAA before the harvest, because quite frankly if mine aren�t as red and as ripe as everyone else�s, I�ll go under.

  Joley is in the barn mixing up the Thiodan: it�s time to spray for the woolly aphid; nobody wants an apple with a worm in it. He�s the first person I�ve seen since the night before, the night with Joellen, and I�m glad it�s him and not Hadley. Joley�s a good guy; he knows when to leave you alone and when not to. �Morning, Sam,� he says to me, without looking up.

  �You know to only spray the northwest half of the orchard?� Even without being told, Joley is a natural farmer. He�s older than I am-I�m not quite sure how much-but I have no trouble getting on with him. Hadley talks back from time to time, but Joley wouldn�t. Absolutely no farming experience, and he�s a natural, did I say that?

  He came in a couple of seasons ago, a Sunday U-Pick-Em day, when there were little kids all over the place. Like mosquitoes, they get in places you don�t want them, and when you slap at them to make them go away, they hover in front of your face to bug you a little bit more. We get lots of the Boston crowd because we�ve got a good reputation, and since he looked like another one of those button-down preppies I assumed he�d come out here to get a bushel or two, to bring them home to some condo on the Harbor. But he came into the retail outlet we open for the fall. He stood in front of the dormant conveyors we use to sort the best from the mediocre apples, and he just kept fingering the gears over and over. He stood there for so long I thought he was sick, and then I thought maybe he was slow-witted so I didn�t go over to him. Finally he walked into the orchards, and, fascinated, I followed him.

  I�ve never told anyone this but it was the most amazing thing I have ever seen. I�ve been working on this orchard my entire life. I learned how to walk by hanging on the low branches of the apple trees. And I have never done the things that I saw him do that day. Joley just walked past the crowds, way past to the roped-off area we keep for the commercial apples, and stood in front of a tree. I held back from yelling at him; instead I followed him, hiding behind trees. Joley stopped at a tree-Mac, I believe-and cupped his hands around a small pink blossom. It was a young tree, grafted maybe two seasons ago, and so it wasn�t bearing fruit yet. Or so I thought. He held this blossom in his hands and he rubbed the petal with his fingers, he touched the soft throat of the inside and then he knotted his hands around it, like he was praying. He stood like this for a few minutes and I was too spooked to make a sound. Then he opened is palms. Inside was a smooth, round, red apple, plain as day. The guy�s a magician, I thought. Incredible. It hung from the still-thin branch, which bent under the unnatural weight. Joley picked it and turned around to face me as if he knew I was there all along. He held out the apple to me.

  I don�t think I ever officially offered him the job, or that I even knew I was looking for someone. But Joley stayed on the rest of that day and after that, moving into one of the extra bedrooms of the Big House. He became as good a worker as Hadley, who grew up on a farm in New Hampshire before his dad died and his mom sold out to a real estate developer. All you�d have to do is show Joley once, and he became an expert. He�s a better grafter than I am, now. His specialty, though, is pruning. He can cut branches off a young tree without a second thought, without feeling like he�s killing the thing, and just a season later it is the most beautiful umbrella of leaves you�ve ever seen.

  �Did someone pen up the sheep?� I ask. They can�t get near this stuff. Joley nods and hands me a hose and a nozzle. The really big orchards have machines for this stuff, but I like to work with my hands. It makes me feel, when I pick the fruit, like it actually came from me.

  We head up towards the early Macs and the Miltons, which will come to harvest in last August and September. I wonder how long it will take before he asks me about last night.

  �I�ve got a favor, Sam,� Joley says, aiming at a middle-size tree. �I need your permission for something.�

  �Well, shit, Joley. You can just about do anything you want around here. You know that.�

  Joley turns the nozzle so that the pesticide dribbles at his feet. It makes me nervous. He keeps staring at me, and finally, noticing, he gives the nozzle a hard twist to the left to shut the flow. �My sister and niece are in trouble and I need a place for them to stay a while. I invited them here. I don�t know how long they�ll stay.�

  �Oh.� I don�t know what I had expected, but somehow it was worse. �I don�t think that�s a problem. What kind of trouble?� I don�t want to pry, but I feel like I ought to know. If it�s illegal, I may have to reconsider.

  �She left her husband. She belted him, and she took the kid and left.�

  I try to place Joley�s sister; I know he has talked about her in the past. I�d always pictured her like Joley-thin and dark, honest, easy. I pictured her the way I picture most girls from Newton where I know Joley grew up-dressed well, smelling like lilac, their hair smooth and heavy. The girls I knew from the Boston suburbs were rich and stuckup. They�d shake my hand if intr
oduced to me, and then check when they thought I wasn�t looking to see if they had gotten dirty. A farmer, they�d say. How interesting. Meaning: I didn�t know there were any left in Massachusetts.

  But girls like this didn�t leave their husbands, and especially didn�t hit their husbands. They got quiet divorces and half the summer homes. Maybe she�s fat and looks like a sumo wrestler, I think. Because of Joley, I always gave this unknown woman the benefit of the doubt. He�s talked about her a lot, a little bit at a time, and you get the sense she�s his hero.

  �So where is she?� I ask.

  �Headed towards Salt Lake City,� Joley says. �I�m writing her across the country. She doesn�t have a super sense of direction.� He pauses. �Hey. If her husband calls, just tell him you don�t know a thing.�

  Husband. The whale guy. I am starting to remember bits and pieces of a person. Rebecca, the girl�s name. A picture in Joley�s room of a beautiful little boy (himself ) and a thin, pale girl holding him tight, beside her. A plain girl I had asked about, and was surprised to find out was related. �She�s the one in San Diego,� I say, and Joley nods.

  �She isn�t going to go back there,� Joley says, and I wonder how he knows with such conviction. He reaches under the tree, holding the pesticide stream away, to pick up a fallen branch. He tucks it into a back pocket. �The guy she married is an idiot. I never understood what it was about him she couldn�t live without. Goddamned humpback whales.�

  �Whales,� I say. �Wow.� I�ve never heard Joley get so emotional about anything. Most of the time I�ve been with him, he moves in shadows, quiet, keeping in his thoughts. He lifts the stream of chemicals into the sky, letting it come down, artificial rain, on the top of a neighboring tree.

  Joley cuts the line of spray and drops the can softly onto the lawn. �Why do you spray, anyway? Isn�t there something you can use that�s natural?�

  I sit down on a dry patch of grass and stretch out on my back. �You wouldn�t believe the crap that goes on with the commercial crop when you don�t spray. Aphids and worms and scabs and all kinds of other things. There�s just too many of them to take care of individually.� I shade the sun from my eyes. �You leave it up to nature, and the whole thing goes to shit.�

  �Yeah,� says Joley. �Tell me about it.� He comes to sit down beside me. �You�ll like her. You remind me of her, a little.�

  I think about asking, In what way? but I am not sure that I want to know the answer. Maybe it�s the way I�ve taken him in, I think. I find myself wanting to know more about this Jane, what she looks like and the kinds of books she reads and where she got the nerve to hit her own husband. She sounds like, as my father would say, hell on wheels. �Women don�t know what they want anymore. They tell you they�re getting married, and then they jump you. Go figure.�